Author Topic: Warning labels most disregarded (Read 368 times)

Chairboy · « **on:** June 07, 2002, 12:20:21 PM »

I'd like to suggest a topic: Warning labels on products that are most disregarded. This refers to the things on stuff we buy that make instructions meant entirely to cover the manufacturers butt, but it describes something that people use the product for almost exclusively.

To christen this conversation, I suggest the following:

Q-Tips.

Every Q-tips box/dispenser in production has a warning telling the user that they must not stick Q-Tips into their ears. I forward the outrageous motion that most (if not all) Q-tip user purchasers buy said swabs primarily for poking around in their ear.

Anyone else?

Sandman · « **Reply #1 on:** June 07, 2002, 12:29:41 PM »

A longer list would be the ones that don't make any sense...

The warning on the blow dryer instructions says that it's not to be used in the shower.

HFMudd · « **Reply #2 on:** June 07, 2002, 01:06:16 PM »

But people are dumb. Really really dumb... Here are a couple goods ones that would support things like warning labels for blow dryers in the shower.

Some years back I was reading a list, probably related to Dilbert InDUHvidulas, of dumb things people did. One fellow wrote that he worked phones at a clinic. A woman called in and was worried that her child had eaten a bug and wanted to know if she needed to bring the kid to the hospital. The fellow assured her that eating a bug would not harm the child. The woman thanked him and then in an off hand manner mentioned that she had given her kid bug poison in order to make sure bug in his tummy was dead. (He told her that is was now time to get to the emergency room.)

And this one is not second hand, I was there. In my high school metal shop a fellow decided to make a pipe bomb. So he crimps the end of a pipe shut in a vice and gas welds it closed. Then he fills it with black powder (you know, the smokey stuff used in muzzle loaders) and crimps the other end shut. Guess what he does next? If you guessed "drilled a hole for a fuse", you would be wrong. That would only be quite stupid. No, what this guys does is take his pipe bomb back over to gas welding booths and start to weld it shut. Man it was loud! And you could hear the pipe bouncing around the shop. So far as I can guess, the only thing that kept him from getting killed was that he didn't get very far before the powder went off and blew the crimped end open instead of bursting the pipe. As it was he just burned half of his scruffy high schooler beard off.

So, warning labels for dumb things do have a place in our world.

Wingnut_0 · « **Reply #3 on:** June 07, 2002, 01:45:03 PM »

ahh the good ol' days of making bombs. Remember making one with a buddy and I suggested we go out in a field to detonate it. Nope he wanted to put it under a 50 gallon drum to see how high it'd blow it.

The drum was about 35 ft from the house. When we detonated it by remote (nice electronic home built by me..hehe). The bomb exploded sending about 3 peices of the barrel flying up. The bad part was the 20 million small pieces that flew into his dad's 73 camero..lol

And this was 15 years ago before the internet showed the easy ways. We had to experiment back then..hehe

Dinger · « **Reply #4 on:** June 07, 2002, 01:46:30 PM »

Back in Livermore, CA (funked can attest to this one), the courthouse used to be in a parking lot across the street from "Hank's Place", one of the seedier sh0tkicker dives. Anyway, this guy's got a court date for DUI, and he goes down with his wife. It's his third offense or something, and he's convinced he won't go to jail. For he'd wired himself up with dynamite, so if the judge sentenced him to prison, he'd blow himself up right there in the court room.

He got off.
So, to celebrate he and the missus go across the street to Hanks and have a few shots before hitting the road back to the trailer court at the edge of town. He shows some people in the bar the little dynamite rig he's got going. They then get in the car and drive home. Out on Portola avenue, somebody uses a garage door opener.

She survived.

what does this have to do with warning labels?

Heh. at the national lab in Livermore the democrats made "Safety" a ridiculous issue and the republicans made "Security" equally obscene. So everything is dying under a bureaucratic pile of safety and security (depending on who's in power). With the endless warning labels going up, somebody put one over the urinal in the men's room:

WARNING: THE PERSON STANDING BEHIND YOU MIGHT NOT SEE YOU.

for the least truthful ones, how about:
WARNING: THIS SKULL-SHAPED TOBACCOMASTER™ CERAMIC WATER FILTRATION SYSTEM IS TO BE USED WITH TOBACCO ONLY

?

Tac · « **Reply #5 on:** June 07, 2002, 02:26:47 PM »

Airline Peanuts Instruction Label:

"Open bag, eat peanuts."

Someone must've tried it the other way. Oh the humanity!

But you can't beat the Japanese at their labels. Certain accessories like candles, cylindrical shaped tools and even vacuum cleaners had warning labels "Not to be used for the other use"

Man I gotta find the website that had the collection of those labels again, was hilarious!

rogwar · « **Reply #6 on:** June 07, 2002, 02:30:56 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Wingnut_0
ahh the good ol' days of making bombs. Remember making one with a buddy and I suggested we go out in a field to detonate it. Nope he wanted to put it under a 50 gallon drum to see how high it'd blow it.

The drum was about 35 ft from the house. When we detonated it by remote (nice electronic home built by me..hehe). The bomb exploded sending about 3 peices of the barrel flying up. The bad part was the 20 million small pieces that flew into his dad's 73 camero..lol

And this was 15 years ago before the internet showed the easy ways. We had to experiment back then..hehe

We did a lot of crazy watermelon like this as well. We made some very powerful devices with a variety of materials. We have had access sometimes to the real stuff.

The most fun though was filling a huge garbage bag full of acetylene and oxygen. Tying it off and then setting it off electronically in a field from a substantial distance away. Man the shockwave was incredible. Propane and oxygen made an even bigger bang. It was also cheaper than acetylene.

In todays time we would make the national news, ATF agents sweeping over everything. That thought scares me more than our potential for injury.

mietla · « **Reply #7 on:** June 07, 2002, 08:15:32 PM »

Tom Reilly's Warbirds Museum

Tac · « **Reply #8 on:** June 07, 2002, 09:05:30 PM »

must be an old pic. Today you can find Bodhi's phone number right next to the flush lever.

rosco · « **Reply #9 on:** June 07, 2002, 09:28:04 PM »

Speaking of dumb people. We had a hired man who bought a dirtbike from my cousin. After a few failed attempts to get it running he finally thought to check if it had gas in it. He took off the cap, looked in but couldnt see anything, so he used his lighter to get a better look... charbroiled tard. beard, eyebrows, half his hair all gone. He was lucky though, no perminent damage other that what god had already done to him

Sad thing is this guy shacked up with some tardette and now has offspring. People like this should have thier water supply spiked so they cant reproduce.